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Metrology, standardization and certification |Метрология, стандартизация и сертификация

Lesson 9

Read the text: Electronic Calculator

This is a truly wonderful machine. It is one of the earliest all-electronic calculators, and is generally regarded as the first transistorized electronic calculator. A few other calculator manufacturers in Europe and Japan claim that they were the first to develop an all-transistor calculator, but the simple fact is that Friden announced the Friden 130 nearly six months before these other manufacturers even displayed prototypes of their transistorized calculators. Earlier electronic calculators used relays or vacuum tubes, such as the Casio 14-A relay calculator (1956), or the tube-based Sumlock Comptometer/Bell Punch Anita C/VIII (1961). Along with being the first all-transistor calculator, the Friden 130 pioneered the use of Reverse Polish Notation (RPN), a method of entering math problems using a multi-register stack. RPN logic made complex calculations easier to perform without having to write down intermediate results and re-enter them into the calculator when needed. Friden continued the use of this stack-based method of calculating in its second generation of calculators (an example being the Friden 1162), but for some reason the principle was never patented by Friden. Later, Hewlett-Packard used RPN math logic in their first electronic calculator, the 9100A, and it proved so successful that HP still uses RPN logic on a good many of their calculators to this day. Later calculators from Singer/Friden abandoned RPN in favor of more conventional arithmetic logic.

The story behind the development of the Friden 130 is somewhat shrouded in the mists of time, but the general situation appears to be that Friden management realized that the days of the electro-mechanical calculator were numbered sometime in the early 1960's. Sumlock Comptometer, Ltd. had set the calculator world on end when it introduced the first electronic calculator in 1961, and many makers of electro-mechanical and relay calculators realized that the future of calculating was with electronics. Electronic circuitry is fast, quiet, and reliable. Electro-mechanical calculators were noisy, slow, and had lots of moving parts which required regular maintenance to continue to operate properly. Relay calculators, while less noisy, and faster than electro-mechanical machines, also had moving parts (relays rely on mechanical movement to close switch contacts), and also had myriad switch contacts that wore over time and required periodic maintenance and adjustment. The problem for the companies that sold electro-mechnical or relay calculators as their bread-and-butter business was that they had brilliant mechanical and switching engineers, but little in the way of the electronic engineers needed to design a practical electronic calculator. Most of the electrical engineers were working in military, space, aviation, or communications technology and those markets sucked up all of the electronic engineers as soon as they graduated from college, making the good electronic engineers a rare commodity.

By researching patent information, along with some first-hand information from a Friden service technician, Nicholas Bodley, it has become clear that the major contributor to the architecture and design of the Friden 130 was a brilliant electronic engineer named Robert Ragen. It isn't clear if Ragen was hired at Friden specifically to work on the electronic calculator project, or if he already worked for Friden as an electrical engineer for some of the more complex electro-mechanical calcualtors that Friden made. In any case, Ragen, along with team of other Friden engineers and craftsmen, came up with a prototype of the Friden electronic calculator whose electronics fit in a box just a shade bigger than today's small refrigerators. Sitting on top of this box was a console that provided the user interface for the calculator, consisting of the keyboard and CRT-display. This proof of concent was far from practical as a useful piece of office equipment, but it served to demonstrate the concept .  Friden had the means to build an all-electronic calculator. This prototype had all of the functionality of the Friden 130, including RPN logic, CRT display, acoustic delay-line storage, and transistorized construction.

1. Match the left part with the right:

2. Complete the sentences with the suggested words: relay, little, problem, practical

The _______ for the companies that sold electro-mechnical or _______calculators as their bread-and-butter business was that they had brilliant mechanical and switching engineers, but _______ in the way of the electronic engineers needed to design a _______electronic calculator.